The War of the End of the World

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  Armed sentinels ring the tent to seal it off from the remainder of the column. Just beyond them are the correspondents, spying on the scene from between the rifles. They have plied the nearsighted journalist with questions, and he has told them what he has seen. Between the sentinels and the camp is a no-man’s-land that no officer or soldier crosses unless summoned by Major Cunha Matos. The latter strides back and forth with his hands clasped behind his back. Colonel Tamarindo and Captain Olímpio de Castro join him and the correspondents see them pace round and round the tent. Their faces gradually grow darker as the great twilight conflagration dies away. From time to time, Tamarindo goes inside the tent, comes out again, and the three begin pacing about once more. Many minutes go by, half an hour, an hour perhaps, and then Captain de Castro suddenly walks over to the correspondents and motions to the reporter from the Jornal de Notícias to come with him. A bonfire has been lighted and somewhere in the rear the bugler is blowing the evening mess call. The sentinels allow the nearsighted journalist, whom the captain is escorting to the colonel and the major, to pass.

  “You know this region. You can help us,” Tamarindo murmurs, in a tone of voice not at all like his usual amiable one, as though struggling to overcome a profound repugnance at being forced to discuss the matter at hand with an outsider. “The doctor insists that the colonel must be taken to a place where there are certain comforts and conveniences, where he can be well cared for. Is there any sort of hacienda nearby?”

  “Certainly,” the high-pitched voice says. “You know as well as I do that there’s one.”

  “Apart from Calumbi, I mean,” Colonel Tamarindo corrects himself, ill at ease. “The colonel refused in no uncertain terms the baron’s invitation to quarter the regiment. It’s not the proper place to take him.”

  “There isn’t any other,” the nearsighted journalist says trenchantly, gazing intently through the semidarkness at the field tent and the greenish glow coming from inside it. “Everything the eye can see between Cansanção and Canudos belongs to the Baron of Canabrava.”

  The colonel looks at him in distress. At that moment Dr. Souza Ferreiro comes out of the tent, wiping his hands. He is a man with silver-gray temples and a receding hairline, dressed in an army uniform. The officers surround him, forgetting the journalist, who remains standing there nonetheless, brazenly staring at them with eyes magnified by the lenses of his glasses.

  “It’s the nervous and physical fatigue of the last few days,” the doctor says querulously, placing a cigarette between his lips. “Another attack, two years later, in the situation we’re in. Bad luck, a trick of the Devil—who can say? I’ve bled him, for the congestion. But he needs baths, massages, the whole treatment. You decide, gentlemen.”

  Cunha Matos and Olímpio de Castro look at Colonel Tamarindo. The latter clears his throat but says nothing. “Do you insist that we take him to Calumbi, when you know the baron’s there?” he finally says.

  “I didn’t say a word about Calumbi,” Souza Ferreiro shoots back. “I’m only talking about what the patient needs. And allow me to add one more thing. It’s foolhardy to keep him here in these conditions.”

  “You know the colonel,” Cunha Matos interjects. “He’ll feel affronted, humiliated in the house of one of the leaders of the monarchist subversion.”

  Dr. Souza Ferreiro shrugs. “I respect your decision. I’m your junior officer. I’ve fulfilled my responsibility.”

  A commotion behind them causes the four officers and the journalist to turn around and look in the direction of the field tent. Moreira César is standing in the doorway, dimly visible in the feeble light from the lamp inside, roaring something they fail to understand. Naked to the waist, leaning on the canvas with his two hands, he has dark, motionless patches on his chest that must be leeches. He has the strength to remain on his feet for only a few seconds. They see him collapse, a querulous moan on his lips. The doctor kneels down to force his mouth open as the officers pick him up by the feet, the arms, the shoulders, to carry him back to the folding cot.

  “I assume the responsibility of taking him to Calumbi, sir,” Captain Olímpio de Castro says.

  “Very well,” Tamarindo replies. “Take an escort and accompany Souza Ferreiro. But the regiment will not go to the baron’s. It will camp here.”

  “May I go with you, Captain?” the nearsighted journalist asks in his importunate voice. “I know the baron. I worked for his paper before I went over to the Jornal de Notícias.”

  They stayed in Ipupiará ten days more, after the visit from the capangas on horseback, who took with them as their only booty a bright-red shock of hair. The stranger began to get better. One night the Bearded Lady heard him conversing, in labored Portuguese, with Jurema, asking her what country he was in, what month and day it was. The following evening he slid down off the wagon and managed to take a few tottering steps. And two nights later he was in the Ipupiará general store, his fever gone, thin as a rail but in good spirits, plying the storekeeper (who kept looking at his bare skull in amusement) with questions about Canudos and the war. Overcome with a sort of wild exhilaration, he made the man repeat several times that an army of half a thousand men, come from Bahia under the command of Major Febrônio, had been demolished at O Cambaio. The news excited him so much that Jurema, the Bearded Lady, and the Dwarf thought he was about to rave deliriously in a strange tongue again. But after having had a little glass of cachaça with the storekeeper, Gall fell into a deep sleep for a good ten hours.

  At Gall’s insistence, they started out again. The circus people would rather have stayed a while longer in Ipupiará, where they could get themselves enough to eat, if nothing else, by entertaining the villagers with clown acts and stories. But the foreigner was afraid that the capangas would come back and carry off his head this time. He had recovered: he talked with such whirlwind energy that the Bearded Lady, the Dwarf, and even the Idiot listened to him dumfounded. They had to guess at part of what he said, and his irresistible urge to talk about the jagunços intrigued them. The Bearded Lady asked Jurema if he was one of those apostles of the Blessed Jesus who were wandering about all over. No, he wasn’t: he hadn’t been to Canudos, he didn’t know the Counselor, and he didn’t even believe in God. Jurema couldn’t understand this mania of his either. When Gall announced to them that he was heading north, the Dwarf and the Bearded Lady decided to follow him. They wouldn’t have been able to explain why. Perhaps it was gravity that was the cause—weak bodies magnetized by strong ones—or simply not having anything better to do, no alternative, no will to oppose that of someone who, unlike themselves, appeared to be following a definite path through life.

  They left at dawn and walked all day amid stones and thorny mandacarus, not saying a word to each other, with the wagon in front, the Bearded Lady, the Dwarf, and the Idiot alongside, Jurema right next to the wheels, and Galileo Gall drawing up the end of the caravan. To shield himself from the sun, he had put on a sombrero that had once belonged to Pedrim the Giant. He had grown so thin that his pants were baggy and his shirt kept sliding off his shoulders. The red-hot bullet that had grazed him had left a purple mark behind his ear and Caifás’s knife a sinuous scar between his neck and his shoulder. His thinness and paleness somehow made his eyes look wilder still. On the fourth day of their trek, at a bend in the road known as the Sítio das Flores, they ran into a band of starving outlaws, who took their burro away from them. They were in a thicket of thistles and mandacarus, divided in two by a dry riverbed. In the distance they could see the mountainside of the Serra da Engorda. There were eight bandits, some of them dressed in leather, wearing sombreros decorated with coins, and armed with knives, carbines, and bandoleers. The leader—a short, paunchy man with the profile of a bird of prey and cruel eyes—was called Toughbeard by his men, even though he was beardless. He gave a few terse instructions, and in less time than it takes to tell, his cangaceiros killed the burro, skinned it, hacked it up, built a fire, and roasted great chunks of it, wh
ich a while later they fell upon voraciously. They must have gone without food for several days, for some of them, overjoyed at this feast, began to sing.

  As he watched them, Galileo wondered how long it would take the scavengers and the elements to turn the carcass into the little mounds of polished bones that he had grown accustomed to coming across in the backlands, skeletons, remains, mementos of man or animal that were grim reminders to the traveler of the fate that awaited him in case he fainted from exhaustion or died. He was sitting in the wagon alongside the Bearded Lady, the Dwarf, the Idiot, and Jurema. Toughbeard took off his sombrero, on the brim of which, above his forehead, a sovereign gleamed, and made signs to the circus people to eat. The first to dare to do so was the Idiot, who knelt down and reached his fingers out toward the dense cloud of smoke. The Bearded Lady, the Dwarf, Jurema followed his example. Gall walked over to the fire. Life in the open air had made him as tanned and weather-beaten as a sertanejo. From the moment he saw Toughbeard take off his sombrero, his eyes never left the man’s head. And Gall kept on looking at him intently as he raised a chunk of meat to his lips. On trying to swallow the first mouthful, he began to retch.

  “He can only swallow soft things,” Jurema explained to the men. “He’s been sick.”

  “He’s a foreigner,” the Dwarf added. “He talks languages.”

  “Only my enemies look at me like that,” the leader of the cangaço said in a harsh voice. “Stop staring at me; it bothers me.”

  Because, even as he was vomiting, Gall’s eyes had never left him. They all turned toward him. Still scrutinizing the man, Galileo took a few steps forward, thus bringing himself within reach of him. “The only thing that interests me is your head,” he said very slowly. “Allow me to touch it.”

  The bandit reached for his knife, as though he were about to attack him. Gall calmed him down by giving him a friendly smile.

  “Let him touch you,” the Bearded Lady muttered. “He’ll tell you your secrets.”

  His curiosity aroused, the outlaw looked Gall over from head to foot. He had a piece of meat in his mouth, but he had stopped chewing. “Are you a magician?” he asked, the cruelty in his eyes suddenly evaporating.

  Gall smiled at him again and took another step forward. He was so close now that his body lightly brushed the bandit’s. He was taller than the cangaceiro, whose bushy head of hair barely came up to his shoulder. Circus people and bandits alike stared at the two of them, intrigued. Still holding the knife in his hand, Toughbeard seemed wary, but also curious. Galileo raised his two hands, placed them on Toughbeard’s head, and began to palpate it.

  “At one time I set out to be one,” he answered, pronouncing each syllable carefully as his fingers moved slowly, parting the locks of hair, skillfully exploring the bandit’s scalp. “The police didn’t give me time.”

  “The flying brigades?” Toughbeard said understandingly.

  “We have one thing in common at least,” Gall said. “We have the same enemy.”

  Toughbeard’s beady eyes were suddenly full of anxiety, as though he were helplessly trapped. “I want to know how I’m going to die,” he said in a half whisper, forcing himself to reveal what was preying most on his mind.

  Gall’s fingers poked about in the outlaw’s mane, lingering for an especially long while above and behind his ears. His face was very serious, and his eyes had the same feverish gleam as in his moments of euphoria. Science was not wrong: his fingertips could clearly feel the organ of Combativeness, the organ of those inclined to attack, of those who enjoy fighting, of those who are rash and unruly; it was right there beneath his fingers, a round, contumelious bump, in both hemispheres. But, above all, it was the organ of Destructiveness, the organ of those who are vengeful, given to extremes, cruel, the organ that makes for bloodthirsty monsters when its effects are not counteracted by moral and intellectual powers, that was abnormally prominent: two hard, hot swellings, above the ears. “The predatory man,” he thought.

  “Didn’t you hear?” Toughbeard roared, moving his head away from the touch of Gall’s fingers with such a violent jerk that it made the latter stagger. “How am I going to die?”

  Gall shook his head apologetically. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not written in your bones.”

  The band of cangaceiros standing watching dispersed, returning to the fire in search of more roast meat. But the circus people stayed where they were, next to Gall and Toughbeard.

  The bandit looked pensive. “There’s nothing I’m afraid of,” he said gravely. “When I’m awake. At night it’s different. I see my skeleton sometimes. As though it was there waiting for me, do you follow me?”

  He gestured in annoyance, rubbed his hand across his mouth, spat. He was visibly upset, and everyone stood there in silence for a time, listening to the flies, the wasps, the bluebottles buzzing about the remains of the burro.

  “It’s not a dream I’ve just had recently,” the brigand added. “I used to have it as a child back in Cariri, long before I came to Bahia. And also when I was with Pajeú. Sometimes years go by and I don’t have that dream. And then, all of a sudden, I start having it again, every night.”

  “Pajeú?” Gall said, looking at Toughbeard with a gleam in his eye. “The one with the scar? The one who…?”

  “That’s right. Pajeú.” The cangaceiro nodded. “I was with him for five years, without our ever having words. He was the best when it came to fighting. The angel’s wing brushed him and he got converted. He’s now one of the elect of God, up there in Canudos.”

  He shrugged, as though he found this difficult to understand, or as though it were a matter of complete indifference to him.

  “Have you been to Canudos?” Gall asked. “Tell me about it. What’s happening up there? What’s it like?”

  “You hear lots of things,” Toughbeard said, spitting. “That they killed a whole bunch of soldiers who’d come with some man named Febrônio. They strung them up on the trees. If a corpse isn’t buried, the Can takes off with it, people say.”

  “Are they well armed?” Gall went on insistently. “Will they be able to hold out against another attack?”

  “Yes, they will,” Toughbeard growled. “Pajeú’s not the only one up there. There’s also Abbot João, Taramela, Joaquim Macambira and his sons, Pedrão. The most fearful outlaws in these parts. They used to hate each other and kill each other. But now they’re brothers and fight for the Counselor. They’re going to go to heaven, despite their evil deeds. The Counselor pardoned them.”

  The Bearded Lady, the Idiot, the Dwarf, and Jurema had sat down on the ground and were listening spellbound.

  “The Counselor gives the pilgrims a kiss on the forehead,” Toughbeard added. “The Little Blessed One has them kneel and the Counselor lifts them to their feet and kisses them. That’s called the kiss of the elect. People weep for joy. Because once you’re an elect, you know that you’re going to go to heaven. What does death matter after that?”

  “You should be in Canudos too,” Gall said. “They’re your brothers too. They’re fighting so that heaven will descend on earth. So that the hell that you’re so afraid of will disappear.”

  “I’m not afraid of hell but of death,” Toughbeard corrected him, with no sign of anger in his voice. “Or to put it a better way, I’m afraid of the nightmare, the dream of death. That’s something different, don’t you see what I mean?”

  He spat again, with a tortured look on his face. Suddenly he said to Jurema, pointing at Gall: “Doesn’t your husband ever dream of his skeleton?”

  “He’s not my husband,” Jurema answered.

  Big João entered Canudos at a run, his head in a whirl at the responsibility that had just been conferred upon him and that with each passing second seemed to him to be an honor not deserved by a poor sinner such as he, a person who sometimes believed himself to be possessed by the Dog (it was a fear that kept returning, like the seasons). But he had accepted, and he couldn’t back down now. He stopped as h
e reached the first houses, not knowing what to do. He had intended to go to Antônio Vilanova’s, to find out from him how to organize the Catholic Guard. But now his bewildered heart told him that what he needed most at this moment was not practical help but spiritual aid. It was dusk; the Counselor would soon be mounting to the tower; if he hurried, perhaps he could still find him in the Sanctuary. He began running again, through narrow winding streets crowded with men, women, and children who were leaving their houses, shanties, caves, holes, and flocking, as they did every evening, to the Temple of the Blessed Jesus to listen to the counsels. As he went by the Vilanovas’ store, he saw that Pajeú and some twenty men, equipped for a long journey, were bidding groups of their relatives goodbye. He had great difficulty making his way through the great throng overflowing the open ground adjoining the churches. Darkness was falling and here and there little lamps were already twinkling.

  The Counselor was not in the Sanctuary. He had accompanied Father Joaquim as far as the exit on the road to Cumbe so as to say goodbye to the priest as he left town, and then, cradling the little white lamb with one hand and holding his shepherd’s crook in the other, he had stopped by the Health Houses to comfort the sick and the aged. Because of the great crowds that dogged his every footstep, these tours of Belo Monte were becoming more and more difficult for the Counselor with each passing day. This time the Lion of Natuba and the women of the Sacred Choir had gone with him to escort him, but the Little Blessed One and Maria Quadrado were there in the Sanctuary.